The Window

A car passing by, two lovers walking hand in hand, a cyclist ringing his bell and an ambulance stopping briefly around the corner... these are a few of the things I saw from my window the other day. I am not sure how many of these people observed that my window curtains were open.


Surely the person driving the car was concentrating on the next turn to take, possibly making his way to work on a late day. May be he overslept, or did not remember to wind up his alarm clock, or may be he does not use a winding clock (who does nowadays?) but forgot to charge his precious mobile phone. May be he is too worried about the next big project his colleague might wind up getting if he does not impress his boss soon enough, and this is definitely not the right way to go about it... He has his own thousand things to worry about, so why would he look at me at all? Silly me.


The two lovers were so engrossed in each others eyes that they almost walked into the telephone pole in front of them. I am not sure if they would have noticed the car screeching hard to come to a halt right around the corner. So there is not a chance that they would have observed me behind my window right by the pavement they were walking.


Is it divine intervention that one of them dropped something and bent to pick up, while the other observed the car zipping towards them with the tyres screaming loudly in protest of the road's friction? The girl just pulled the guy off the path just in time, and I could see the initial amazement, then the onset of fear and relief on his face, just as I saw pure fear in the driver's, as he drove towards me.


I do not know what made me just sit there, with my eyes wide open, looking between the headlights, the horror-struck driver's face and the relieved girl; but the next thing I remember is a thud and blackness. I guess the ambulance was a bit too late, for though I thought I fell to the ground and felt a sharp pain, I was at the next moment sitting at my window, looking outside onto the pavement.


Quite a lot of people had gathered around by now, and I did not understand in the beginning why they were not looking at me, but somewhere 2 feet below. I thought the initial daze of being hit by a car had left my hearing temporarily disabled, but I could not shake it out of me, because for some reason I could not shake at all.


By the time I did understand, there was a person sitting beside me, watching without speaking, a similar confused look at his face. I was not sure if I could talk myself, probably because I was not sure I could describe the situation to myself. So, we just sat there in silence, aware of each other's company, until all the people left, and removed the car from the wall, and built another wall, and a new window came in place, and a lot of people walked by, and drove by, and stopped by.


They still do.


- Gaggy